Over the course of 11 chapters spanning 360 pages, Jono provides a host of practical advice about how to best cultivate a community. Although many of the examples he provides are rooted in the world of open source software (and, in particular, the community which supports the Ubuntu distribution of Linux), the principles generally apply far more widely – to all sorts of communities, particularly communities with a significant online presence and significant numbers of volunteers. To quote from the preface:

The Art of Community is not specifically focused on computing communities, and the vast majority of its content is useful for anything from political groups to digital rights to knitting and beyond.

Within this wide range of possible communities, this book will be useful for a range of readers:

Professional community managers – If you work in the area of community management professionally

Volunteers and community leaders – If you want to build a strong and vibrant community for your volunteer project

Commercial organizations – If you want to work with, interact with, or build a community around your product or service

Open source developers – If you want to build a successful project, manage contributors, and build buzz

Marketeers – If you want to learn about viral marketing and building a following around a product or service

Activists – If you want to get people excited about your cause

Every chapter in this book is applicable to each of these roles. While technology communities provide many examples throughout the book, the purpose of these examples requires little technical knowledge.

I’ve just finished reading all 360 pages. Each new chapter introduces important new principles and techniques. I was reading the book for three reasons:

The book succeeded, for me, on all three levels. Parts that I particularly liked included:

The importance of establishing a compelling mission statement for a community (Chapter 2)

Tips on building simple, effective, and nonbureaucratic processes that enable your community to conduct tasks, work together, and share their successes (Chapter 4)

How to build excitement and buzz around your community – and some telling examples of how not to do this (Chapter 6)

The importance of open and transparent community governance principles – and some reasons for occasionally limiting openness (Chapter 8)

Guidance on how to identify, handle, and prevent irksome conflict (ahead of time, if possible), and on dealing with divisive personalities (Chapter 9)

Ideas on running events – where (if done right) the “community” feeling can deepen to something more akin to “family” (Chapter 10).

(This blogpost contains an extended table of contents for Jono’s book. And see here for a short video of Jono describing his book.)

The very end of the book mentions an annual conference called “The community leadership summit”. To quote from the event website:

Take the microphone and join experienced community leaders and organizers to discuss, debate and explore the many avenues of building strong community in an open unconference setting, complimented by additional structured presentations.

I’m attracted by the idea of participating in the 2010 version of that summit 🙂